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Whoever does not know the Syrian regime, would probably not know that what it is capable of. In fact, we do not know a single regime with the same skills and professionals to stage fake incidents, manufacture Islamic, patriotic and revolutionary labels, as well as manufacturing leaders, breaking through the opposition groups with agents and spies, using vicious campaigns and extortion.
Indeed, the Assad regime in Syria has survived for 40 years dominating the country and the regional politics in two ways: A subjugation strategy carried out by secret security services which kill without hesitation and the creation of fake institutions under various popular titles. This is how it all began when Hafez Assad led the coup under the Baathist slogan “One Arab nation with an eternal message.”
At that time, the slogan was bright and patriotic, but in fact, it was nothing but propaganda for Assad to gain legitimacy for his coup, and later his rule, killing his comrades and his opponents. Then Hafez Assad invented other “Arab nationalism” entities for those who were opposed to the Baath party. When he discovered that Iran’s Khomeini regime was gaining popularity in the name of Islam, he created extremist Islamic entities with the help of Iran, and established the first Shiite entity in southern Lebanon and a Sunni one in northern Lebanon, linking both groups to Iran.
There is no doubt that Assad was the one who had exploited the Palestinian cause the most, followed by Iran, misleading the people of the region and imposing his supremacy under the pretext of liberating Palestine. Both parties were the ones to abuse Palestinians’ rights the most and used them to dominate Lebanon and the Palestinian forces and then struck at the Arab regimes that opposed them. In fact, they have never threatened Israel.
Those who were shocked today by the acts of Ahmed Jibril and his group — the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command” (PFLP-GC) — because they openly participated in the killing of the Syrian people as well as the members of the Palestinian refugee camps in support of Assad, did not realize what we have been saying for years about our doubts and our rejection of the groups that have been associated with Iran and Syria.
Certainly, all entities that have worked with the Syrian and Iranian regimes have surely soiled their hands with the people’s blood.
It is hard for people like me to believe that they are independent and at the same time working with Assad’s security apparatus. This is what we have been saying about Hassan Nasrallah and his party; when he had raised the slogans of Palestine and Lebanon, his militia was actually nothing but an Iranian-Syrian battalion, and if Israel wanted to eradicate him, it would not have failed. The organizations that previously developed in Damascus like the Palestinian, Turkish, Iraqi and Gulf ones, were employed under the same Syrian domination and leadership, but when some of them saw Assad’s ship sinking, they ran away just like rats fleeing sinking boats.
But what does all the above mentioned have to do with the title of the column and Moaz Al-Khatib, the president of the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution, i.e. the man responsible today for the Syrian revolution?
When he took over the leadership of the organization, many statements and groups emerged against him; the statements were directed to the West claiming that he is an Islamic extremist who was secretly linked to “Al-Qaeda,” and many other contrasting statements were issued under the Islamic, national and revolutionary names, attacking Al-Khatib and accusing him of being an Israeli and American agent. In fact all these statements emerged from one source: The Syrian regime that has mastered misleading campaigns and forgery. This is similar to what the Syrian regime used to do in Iraq where it used to issue statements on behalf of Al-Qaeda and the different national Iraqi forces, while at the same time, it was working with Iran to appoint Nuri Al-Maliki as prime minister despite Iyad Allawi’s victory in the elections; this is a documented story to be told later on.
For years, Assad misled a superpower, the United States, claiming he was against Islamic extremist groups and Al-Qaeda. The Americans believed him to an extent that they shared with him their data. They even sent Al-Qaeda suspects so that his security services would investigate them. However, his intelligence service officers with false beards, claiming to be jihadi leaders secretly working in Syria, received Arab, Gulf, Libyans and other misled soldiers, and trained them to kill and lead unprecedented terrorism operations that our region has never witnessed in its contemporary history.
Assad has a timeworn experience in the “reincarnation” of groups, which he initiated in Lebanon. Back in the 1980s, the regime used to train Lebanese groups to abduct Arab and foreign diplomats, and carry out suicide operations under Shiite, national and Palestinian causes. Through these violence workshops, Assad was able to control Lebanon for three decades, then Bashar Assad tried to imitate his father, so he assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 other Lebanese figures, to terrorize his opponents and control the entire country, only if it had not been the Achilles’ heel. Hariri was the weakest Lebanese leader in terms of having military power, because he had no militias; nevertheless, his death became the beginning of the end, so the fire that was ignited by Assad in Lebanon and the region, extended and reached into Syria as we are witnessing today.
We should say to those who are engaged by the Syrian revolution and its millions of sympathizers, that they should not judge a book by its cover. There are jihadist and national groups that are fake or infiltrated: they aim at dismantling the revolution’s huge rally, and turn the rebels’ weapons against each other, so the Syrian people will be preoccupied by discord and disharmony for many long years and Syrians will wish to go back to Assad’s days.
We have to realize with this huge amount of evidence that Assad is not irresponsible, as some like to describe him, and that he knew for more than a year now that his regime will eventually fall but he refused to step down before destroying Syria and its tolerant and reconciled society, and before igniting the civil war between the rebellious people, in the name of religion, identity, history and conflicting individual interests. Those who accuse Al-Khatib of being an agent are nothing but fake revolutionaries employed by Assad to crush his opponents.